This past year has marked one of the most difficult of my life.  It has challenged me in ways I didn’t know were possible and it has caused me to stop and rethink many things.  Some of those things related to photography and how I ought to be pursuing this.  I have toyed with the thought of giving up weddings and finding another focus.  I have toyed with the idea of closing shop.  I have even (very briefly in an insane moment) toyed with the idea of selling my camera equipment.  And after all of that toying I have realized that I can’t do any of those options.  There is a reason why wedding photography hits me at the very core of my being and why capturing the beginning of a marriage is so important to me.  And when I say important, I mean it is like oxygen to me, it is a calling I can’t explain, it becomes a consuming need/ desire and love that pumps adrenaline into my body and ignites my spirit.   I love to throw my life into a couple that is beginning this marriage journey.  I love being part of the process of making the covenant establishing day important, not just through the images I create but relationally, through the connection we develop.  I think the reason is that I love marriage and all it represents.

So what does it represent?  It represents Christ’s relationship with his body!  It is a picture to the world of  what that relationship looks like.  And I want to be part of building better pictures.  I want to be involved in representing what Christ’s relationship with us ought to look like!  ”By this, they will know that we are his disciples… if you love one another.”  I want to be part of building marriages that show Christ.  I love this John Piper quote:

Very soon the shadow will give way to Reality. The partial will pass into the Perfect. The foretaste will lead to the Banquet. The troubled path will end in Paradise. A hundred candle-lit evenings will come to their consummation in the marriage supper of the Lamb. And this momentary marriage will be swallowed up by Life. Christ will be all and in all. And the purpose of marriage will be complete.  To that end may God give us eyes to see what matters most in this life. May the Holy Spirit, whom he sends, make his crucified and risen Son the supreme Treasure of our lives. And may that Treasure so satisfy our souls that the root of every marriage-destroying impulse is severed. And may the marriage-watching world be captivated by the covenant- keeping love of Christ.

I am married to a man that understands this;  he leads me and draws me back to the cross when my emotions and fears overwhelm me.  He loves and forgives me like Christ and I have never known anyone who more fully gives me a tangible picture of what Jesus has done for me than what I see in Steve.  He never allows the secondary things to become primary.  He lives out the gospel before me and our children every day.  It doesn’t mean we don’t fail or aren’t fallen, broken people.  But in the middle of our brokeness we have learned to set our eyes on our Treasure and learned that “if we set our face to make of marriage mainly what God designed it to be, no sorrows and no calamities can stand in our way. Every one of them will be, not an obstacle to success, but a way to succeed. The beauty of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church shines brightest when nothing but Christ can sustain it.”

Through the last dark year, this is what I have learned and what I now treasure.  I want to be part of stories that understand this Treasure and I want to shoot them.  Let’s create a picture of what Christ’s relationship with His church ought to look like.

Let picture marriage right;  let’s work to build a picture that brings glory to God.

congratulations!  wyatt + nina:

congrats Raney family!

(I shot this day with the perfectly amazing Rosina, the other half of my trans-continental wedding team.)

from the first dance:

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I
Would like to say to you but I don’t know how
Because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me
And after all, you’re my wonderwall

congrats Jessie and Kenny!  prevail, after all.

This year we began Lent by talking about sacrifice and defining it.  We then collectively (as a family of amazingly creative types) pooled our  creative resources to make this image.  We choose the words as a family.  My husband (a director of an animated TV show and an amazing artist) created the design for the graphic, Catie took his thumbnail design and drew it onto a poster, Sam and Paul helped with coloring.  Then all three kids held it high over the city of Los Angeles, our mission field.

I love this city but it has been a slowly won love.  The first several years we lived here, I wanted to leave.  Desperately.  I wanted my mission field to be a safe, pretty corner of the world.  I wanted it to be an overseas foreign country.  I wanted anything but here!  But God has slowly changed my heart and I have grown to love this city.  I pray every day that we can slowly change Los Angeles with the gospel, with sacrifice, with the meaning in these four words.

My Life For Yours.  (our image of sacrifice defined)

This family was so much fun to run around with!   I love how they came ready to play and be goofy and have fun. I love how they showed up in everyday comfy clothes. I love how they were not inhibited by the camera but were just completely themselves.  I love how they love each other! It was a blast to capture it all!   Narrelle is also a very talented wedding and lifestyle photographer in the Melbourne area down under and I was very excited to actually meet her and talk shop. I left wishing their ‘holiday’ could be long-term and looking forward to when and how our path might cross again!  xo

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY NARRELLE!